The Haunted Poppy
by Batteredpen
Summary: Harry is feeling depressed and lonely as Remembrance Day approaches. Ruth's death was only the last in a long series making him question himself and the nature of his service to the state. Can an unexpected ghost from his past make him feel that he has not wasted his life? Kudos has the character copyright.


**_After writing a very long first story I wanted to try a one shot. This is a stand alone story inspired in part from a visit to see the ceramic poppies at the Tower of London combined with the sight of the Shard and a certain picture of PF with AN Other. Thanks are also owed to Antonia Caenis for her advice on the contents of Harry's diary. _**

**_Set post 10.6 November 2011_**

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><p>Kicking his front door firmly shut with a back footed slam as he dumped his briefcase on the small table in his narrow entrance lobby Harry finally decided that the older he became the more he hated Remembrance Day. Some would regard this attitude as astounding considering that Harry had dedicated virtually all his adult life to serving his country, his youthful bemedalled career as an Army officer having been succeeded by a long standing commission in the Security Services of thirty years plus and counting. Actually it wasn't so much the actual concept of remembrance that got his goat. As a scarred survivor of that dirty war in Northern Ireland and the even dirtier – if possible – Cold War, he thought it only fitting that occasionally the civilian population should be forced to stand still and consider the full bloody implications of military action. A salutary reminder that when the forces were despatched overseas it was not to indulge in a paintballing contest producing purely cosmetic casualties. From its nadir some thirty years previously, when woolly minded liberals, (happy in their ignorance of the under the radar currents that even then were gathering strength) had stridently declared that in an increasingly peaceful world the Remembrance rites were becoming an irrelevant archaic survival, the memorial day had seeped back into the collective national consciousness with a wholly unanticipated intensity. It was a development that owed much to participation of Her Majesty's military in a never ending series of localised, but still lethal, wars in various foreign fields. Due to long standing decisions that parts of those foreign fields would not remain forever England the public at large had become increasingly aware of the results of those battles, made visible by the inevitable, seemingly endless, procession of repatriated bodies through Wotton Bassett. As the body count stacked up and the returning coffins were greeted with increasing ceremonial, duly reported in full emotive detail by the media, the MOD had been moved to announce that in the future the route would change to something a little less accessible to the public at large. Operational necessity was claimed, while the cynical, a category that embraced Harry, believed that the political discomfort, created by an inability to formulate a coherent response as to why so many young men and woman were being sacrificed, had played a not insignificant part in that decision. No, what Harry was beginning to loathe with every passing year was the almost enforced wearing of the poppy from the end of October until its sudden abandonment as so much litter on the twelfth of November. He was increasingly prey to the suspicion that for many this day, one of real significance for those who had been personally affected by these various conflicts, had gradually been hijacked into a scarlet encrusted form of nationally orchestrated emoting, simultaneously marking of the end of the Halloween jollity while firing the starting pistol for the tinseled commercial festival that was Christmas. '<em>Wear your poppy with pride<em>' had been fine by Harry, until he'd begun to wonder if the annual '_must wear'_ pressure had transformed the symbol intended to represent the sacrificial death of thousands into a fashion statement that had drowned its actual meaning.

Today, already in a foul and worried mood from reading through the list of new potential candidates, head hunted transfers from the army into the dangerous embrace of Thames House. Knowing just who, on the basis of the CV alone he should chose, and also just why he wouldn't because... he'd emerged from his office to the sight of one of his junior members of the female staff prancing around the Grid while sporting an expensive jewel encrusted poppy brooch. She'd not forget the infuriated roar precipitated by this glittering sight. As she'd vanished into the sanctity of the Ladies to repair her tear stained makeup Erin had attempted to remonstrate with him, only to earn her own sour rebuke, when Harry, ignoring her words, preferred to focus upon her poppy, having noted that it was not discreet and single, but instead composed of a twisted trio stalks, overlarge petals and leaves all combining to convert the simple poppy something akin to a corsage.

"Erin her Majesty is allowed an extra large poppy as the Head of State, what is your excuse."

Stamping into his sitting room, lonely and mellow, the room that was, Harry was just lonely and dejected, he stripped off his suit jacket and tie, throwing them onto the sofa with scant regard for creasing. The violence with which he did this ensuring that his own impeccable single poppy, escaping from its insecurely pinned anchorage on his lapel, fluttered downwards onto the floor, where it just avoided being crushed beneath Harry's heavily descending feet as he trudged his way across the carpet with the intention of seeking solace from the inevitable generous measure of whisky. Not in the mood to cook, anger giving way to something approaching the maudlin, Harry departed from his normal custom in that he picked up the decanter, carrying it and a crystal tumbler back to the sofa where he slumped, as he commenced the tedious process of getting joylessly drunk.

Tomorrow was the day itself which, with Remembrance Sunday following on almost immediately, meant that the Security services would be on high alert. Over the next seventy two hours the streets, workplaces and churches throughout the country would fall silent, while those who wanted to make a statement about peace, religion, or whatever cause they wished to publicise would do their vicious best to disrupt proceedings, meaning that Harry wouldn't have an opportunity to pay his own respects; he'd be working to allow the nation to pay theirs. In recognition of this fact today, although he'd left the Grid earlier than usual for him, instead of departing the building immediately he'd made his own pilgrimage and spent a good fifteen minutes in front of the Thames House memorial, his eyes gazing through the transparent wall on which the names of far too many young officers were etched, while his treacherous mind was circling around that one name jumping out from the list on his desk. Not for the first time, as the water droplets traced their solemn way down the clear expensively pure glass, he pondered on the thought that spooks were as insubstantial in death as they'd been in life, their passing commemorated on a monument that was both translucent to the point of invisibility and hidden from public view. Usually the first name his eyes lighted upon was hers, as he relived yet again her final moments, the last few when he'd also felt truly alive himself. He'd even had a major row when it came to including that last and most personally precious loss from Section D on the panel: R EVERSHED. He'd seriously contemplated issuing a kill order on the jobsworth in the HR department who had obdurately insisted that Ruth didn't qualify for the weeping wall as she had no longer been employed by MI5 at the date of her death. She'd finally received her engraved due when Towers had discovered a technical error in her transfer papers; allegedly. Today though his eyes were continually returning to an earlier entrant on that grim list of Harry's failures: A CARTER. Harry preferred to believe that the reason for this departure from his usual viewing practice was due to Adam having actually died while protecting the crowds at a Remembrance day ceremony from a car bomb. Blown into smithereens in the process not only had he not received any public due, he'd been traduced by the press as the terrorist perpetrator, not the saviour. Harry, arguing with himself, was insisting that the core of his unusual obsession with Adam was solely due to the seasonal revival of his, Harry's anger, at this misrepresentation and not the thought that he'd left behind a young son, just like...**...**in an effort to distract himself from an unacceptable train of thought he consciously cast his eyes over those other names to ensure that he was remembering one and all. Zafar Younis, Colin Wells, Danny Hunter, Helen Flynn, the last striking a chord that instantly sent his unsettled mind reeling even farther back to his to early buried MI5 history. The lovely attractive Helen, her keen fresh face made unrecognisable by the chip fat fryer into which she'd been brutally plunged seconds before her death, and then after suffering agonies Harry could only guess at, had been further disfigured by the bloody hole in her head where her brains had been blown out. Harry, forced to confirm her identity, had promptly vanished to throw up, the sight of Helen's maltreated corpse having forced him to relive that horrific night when the body of his friend Bill had deposited on his, Harry's, doorstep, pinned not with a poppy but a warning note. Bill's remains had also been hideously burnt, the result of a long drawn out torture delivered via a blow torch, flesh charred and with formal identification only possible through the medium of dental records. For your tomorrow Bill, and the others he mourned, had indeed given their today. Unlike those whose sacrifice would be remembered during the next seventy two hours hence in the nationwide slew of official civic ceremonies they would never receive any public recognition. No Commonwealth War Grave headstone for them, no formal recognition at the National Arboretum, alongside other luminaries such as Simon, the ship's cat from HMS Amethyst. The fallen who'd served in this most secret of all the services were even denied the dignity a truthful eulogy at their funeral. For those from MI5 who had not grown old a hidden quasi chapel had to suffice. Along with regular visitations from the depressed Harry, in his doomed attempt to smother a perpetual sense of personal culpability through private silent mourning.

Pondering these and other equally melancholy thoughts as the whisky level in the decanter sank ever lower Harry grew increasingly morose. Had the game been worth a candle, all those dead, not to mention the collateral damage to his marriage. Jane furious that the whole Irish debacle had deprived her of a first wedding anniversary celebration had demanded an explanation. Having prised the whole complicated tale of kidnap, betrayal and death out of Harry she'd forthrightly declared that she'd married a nightmare. He'd managed to make some romantic reparation on that occasion but her statement had stuck. He might not be a nightmare, but with his recent lousy judgements his life had certainly become one. Bloody awful in fact. Everyone he'd ever cared for was either dead or not speaking to him, and for what? So certain bum fluff politicians could pose as defenders of freedom and pretend that they were making the world a better place. Well they weren't fooling Harry. If the world was better and safer how come the body count from the Grid alone had risen so dramatically? Harry would have willing sacrificed himself, anything would have been better than trying to justify the decisions he'd made and lived to regret. Starting with Bill and currently ending with Ruth as the latest victim of his stupidity, and, in the case of Bill, his cowardice. He'd had a gun on that night Bill had been dragged out that Republican infested pub. He should have used it. The later discovery that MI5 had judged Bill's death to be an acceptable price for what had not turned out to be the greater good had festered with Harry for over three decades.

Tipping out the last few drops, vaguely surprised that with the amount he'd consumed he was still conscious,his alcohol glazed eyes blearily fixed onto the abandoned poppy still lying a few tantalising feet away. Even drunk Harry knew that he'd need to secure it back on his suit jacket for in readiness for tomorrow. Moving with all the deliberate effort of one who still retained an awareness that he'd imbibed unwisely Harry leaned over to pluck it from the floor. Under the influence that had affected his normally hard head he slightly misjudged his balance and toppled head first onto the floor. Heaving himself up he hesitated for a moment to get his bearings as he tried to decide which was spinning the most vigorously, himself or the room. Locking onto the one thing that he could see clearly he stretched out his hand to grab the rogue poppy...

Suddenly

...he didn't believe it but the poppy petals began to grow and then expand, transforming gradually before his stunned eyes into a blood red river flowing past him. Astonished he dipped his hand into the seeming water... amazing... it presented as liquid, running through his fingers in tiny rills before smoothing out again into a glacier like surface, leaving his skin remained completely dry. Thick and oozing, it wended its stately way across the room, enclosed within wholly imaginary banks, meandering a merry course around his furniture before floating soundlessly away through the open kitchen door. Harry still half sprawled, half seated on his strangely unstained floor was more concerned to track the poppy petal blood to its source. Tracing its progress backwards across the carpet, from which he was not lifting his eyes, the phenomenon seemed to have originated from the vicinity of a comfortable chair placed on the other side of the room, directly opposite the sofa he'd previously been sprawling on. Further examination produced another detail. The gushing crimson liquid seemed to originate from a pair of heavy duty military boots planted squarely on the carpet.

Harry gulped as he raised his eyes travelled upwards slowly taking in the legs wrapped in camouflage trousers of dull green and browns, the waist with a webbed belt and the torso clothed in a green uniform T shirt, as finally his astonished gaze came to rest upon the face of his very long ago and very dead friend Bill Crombie.

For someone who'd died in a particularly revolting way Bill looked good, in fact he looked exactly as Harry remembered him just before that burning in Belfast. Harry usually had a response for all occasions but this one defeated him. How exactly did you greet a...well what was he looking at, a ghost, Harry didn't believe in them. An intruder; scratch that: his home security system was state of the art. Perhaps the nearest he could come to a sensible description, if you stretched that definition to breaking point, was that at the going down of the sun he was staring at the genie of the whisky bottle. While he was fully occupied in trying to believe his eyes while controlling the downward sag of his jaw Bill took charge.

"Hi Harry. Still testing the your liver to the limit I see."

"Er Bill emm what..."

"What am I doing here, or what do I want? Harry if you think about it I'm sure you really know."

Harry swallowed as he faltered, "I'm so sorry Bill I know I should have..."

If a ghost, or whatever it was that Bill had become, could be said to be impatient that was what was happening, as Bill cut squarely across the budding apology,

"A bit late for that and I don't think you had much choice mate. And it wasn't your decision that left me be barbequed to save Steak Knife. Try again."

Harry had done many odd things in his time but playing _'Twenty Questions'_ with a ghost wasn't something he'd ever imagined. Declining that game he began to stray into _'Animal Vegetable or Mineral'_. "So what are you...?"

"Not a refugee from _'A Christmas Carol'_ which is just as well. With all the fuck ups you've made recently I doubt you want the Ghost of Christmas Past arriving on your doorstep, and Christmas present doesn't seem set to be a huge improvement either."

Even from the ghost of a friend he owed apologies to big time that was a bit much, as Harry, with some revival of his usual bite, informed the shade, "Yes well I'm trying to atone."

"I know – that's what you've been trying to do for years, ever since I was killed in fact, but I'm here to talk about my boy, Will."

Ah metaphorical light was dawning, Harry hadn't actually bothered to switch on the electric variety, preferring the gloom of the room as the perfect partner to his personal maunderings. "Don't worry I intend to keep him out of Section D. I'll ensure he's posted into a less risky section."

"Why?"

Typical response of course. Harry wasn't even surprised. A disregard for danger, the absence of a nose for caution had been the underlying cause of Bill's capture and eventual death. Just like Harry he'd gloried in being a maverick. In truth it was amazing that they'd both somehow managed to bamboozle their way into an organisation that required unquestioning obedience. Even with that memory of Bill's attitude to life... and death...if he was so aware of the recent Harry based disasters it was astounding that he'd thought it necessary to pose that one word question.

"I assume you want him kept safe and well away from danger."

Bill gave a reluctant nod while Harry held his breath, waiting to see if Bill's phantom head remained secure on his equally phantom shoulders. "Preferably, but as that doesn't seem likely I'd prefer him to have the best, and that my age wearied friend is you and you know it."

Despite his earlier statement Bill was obviously not totally up to speed. In the interests of enlightenment Harry informed his ignorance,

"Not any longer, not since..."

Bill was better informed than Harry had guessed as he interjected with a touch of impatience, "Lucas, Elena and Ruth."

Harry the rationalist baulked at the notion, but this then whole scenario was becoming increasingly bizarre. Within his normal conventional sitting room he was being offered a choice of distractions! Become mesmerised by a dry blood river that was, so his surreptitious glance told him, continuing its unimpeded flow from the soles of Bill's boots or indulge in a prolonged Tring style conversation with an irritatingly perky ghost. Bill had always been the cheery one and that, to the point of annoyance, seemed to have survived his gruesome death. Since he was plunging the depths of something supernatural Harry expostulated,

"And how would you know about that? You're dead remember! Surely you've not been haunting me."

The anticipated negative became an affirmative, "Yes actually, every day since I died mate, but only because you've not let go of the guilt."

Harry with the several deaths of his team on his conscience, those he'd reviewed today and especially, if not exclusively Ruth, was disinclined to accept the word of a gobby shade, "Come on, I've more or less buried that especially with..." He hesitated to continue the sentence to its logical conclusion, if he advised Bill that the encroachment of more recent circumstances had superseded the events surrounding that burning in Belfast; that today had been the first time in years he really relived Bill's passing how would the figure before him react?

Bill heaved a plaintive sigh, "Oh dear, as stubborn as ever – you think that – sorry Harry but I need to make my point and so..."

Within the split second, during which Harry wondered what came next, Bill suddenly transformed from a young virile ghost in the prime of death, as it where, into a charred corpse. Hideous, almost sub human with ragged flesh, burnt, partially attached to a skeleton. The tattered flags of clothing clinging, some part melded and dissolved into the broken limbs, the caved in battered chest. Blood that had burnt to a crisp and then congealed. His head, oh God his head. Even in the pleasant understated ambience of Harry's sitting room the remembered acrid stench of cooked flesh arose from the seated corpse, wafting its way across the room and reaching Harry's nostrils as he relived that horror, retching over the Axminster as he was forced to gaze again upon the true stuff of nightmares.

Then mercifully it was over, finished the instant a sound, which Harry suddenly recognised as his own raw screaming, released after years of suppression, rechoed across the room and then petered out.

Bill restored to what Harry supposed he should consider normal continued, "See you've never lost that, any more than you'll lose the sight of Ruth, Adam, Ros.."

Harry halted the roll call. With his stomach still performing somersaults he'd experienced enough hideous recollections for one evening. "Okay you've made your point but I still don't get it. Are you seriously saying you want me to put your son into danger?"

Bill shook his head with mock disbelief, "God with that reasoning how did you ever end up as head of Counter Terrorism?"

"A wonky knee if you must know, and I you thought you'd just said I was the best."

A statement that created the wide grin now decorating the face of his friend, "Good so you were listening. Yeah you are the best which doesn't say a lot about the rest of the staff" Having enjoyed Harry's indignant face he added, "Will has put himself in danger by applying to the Service, I'd just like you to train him, after all you managed to survive."

Harry while feeling somewhat flattered, with the amount of odium he'd incurred recently even praise from a ghost was welcome, felt obliged to admit, "More by good luck than good judgement."

Bill took a moment to digest this before saying thoughtfully, "So you say. Anyway the time allowed to make you see sense is nearly up so a final question before I go – if you send him to another section and he is killed how will you feel?" Greeted by a solid silence he answered for Harry, "You'll wonder if he'd have lived if you'd have taken him on. Harry I know the service is risky, it's what we sign up for."

Harry fixed Bill with the well known Pearce stare, "You're serious, you really want me to take him on despite recent events?"

Bill, defended by being dead, was not intimidated as he gave a sarcastic sigh, "Finally he gets it. Put it this way Harry I'm calling in a thirty year favour, and if you do this just possibly you'll have one less person haunting you. Besides you know he's best candidate on offer. Now is not the time to break the habit of a lifetime, Regnum Defende with only the best in Section D."

Harry pondering for a couple of seconds finally moaned, "What is one less person haunting me. And can I look forward to similar visitations?"

Bill suddenly turned solemn, a rarity in Harry's recollections. "If you keep drinking as much as you have tonight probably, but before I go Harry, a word of advice. You really have turned into a censorious prat. Wotton Bassett happened because the people of a small town decided to honour the fallen. Ordinary people who were obeying an instinct, not participating in a PR inspired grief tourism stunt, so lay off your staff and their chosen poppy format. Just be grateful that the public take the trouble to remember. That brooch you shouted about raised valuable money for the Service charities. Ask yourself what would Ruth have said about your behaviour today? Missing her is no excuse for boozing yourself to death. And while you're about it, STOP FEELING SO BLOODY GUILTY ALL THE TIME."

Stung by the accuracy of the rebuke Harry was beginning to lose his temper, "Since when did you qualify as an agony aunt, and you can say what you like Bill but bloody is about right. I'm covered in the stuff. Even if it is dry like that river flowing from your boots,"

Bill assumed a resigned expression. Harry remembered that one very clearly. It implied that he disagreed but wasn't going to waste his breath arguing. Of course as Bill wasn't actually breathing that might no longer apply. "Oh well if that is what you think, go ahead and drown in it. It'll make a nice change from self pity." With a dramatic wave of his hand the blood red glacier suddenly reared up, transforming into a tsunami, a swirling whirlpool that caught and then wrapped Harry in its midst, tightening around him. Smothered, fighting for breath, he felt himself going down and choking in its redness as he began to hyper ventilate, the precursor to losing consciousness.

Harry slowly opening his eyes, wondering as he regained consciousness what he would see, initially became aware of little beyond a dampness across his forehead. Clammy with sweat, his whole frame shaking with shock and his breath coming in short gasps he gingerly pulled himself upright. His heart rate gradually began to slow as he identified the wetness of his face as springing from a trickle of blood just above his left eyebrow. Feeling sick, but desperate for some light he carefully fumbled his fingers towards a small lamp on the nearby side table. Its gentle glow revealed nothing untoward. The room was much as ever, devoid of any type human presence beyond his own. Of the red river there was no trace. Everything about the room seemed reassuringly normal, as it had been since he arrived home, other than a crimson smear disfiguring the dull beige of the carpet. Touching his slowly clotting cut gently he assumed that the mark was blood, which must have spilled during a brief period of unconsciousness. Beside that evidence of his alcohol inflicted injury rested the slightly crumpled poppy that he'd been attempting to reach just prior to keeling over in his drunken stupor. Nearby, nestling beneath the chair so recently occupied by Bill, the ghost, the shade, the hallucination, the whatever, resided the tumbler that had formally held the residue of the last of his whisky. It must have rolled there as he fell, and now lay there empty, almost winking in reproach.

The cause of the mental disturbance was not hard to divine, he'd been drunk, fallen over, hitting his head against the chair opposite in the process, but why had Bill been the subject of his temporary mental dislocation, why not Ruth, surely the most recent and most personally disastrous of all his losses. Burt what would she have said about his behaviour today – Harry preferred not to speculate, although he knew his visionary visitor had been right, she'd have been upset and appalled, especially at the idea that it was her loss that had triggered it. Loss...had he just been subjected to Bill's long deferred dying request. Harry didn't know. What he did know that ever since the details of the projected new fast tracked candidates had been presented to him he'd been horrified to realise that Will Crombie was by far the best. And Harry had been prepared to reject him – why? Because of his guilt over Bill, because seeing the son would revive memories of the father.

Picking up the poppy and turning it over and over until it was in danger of shredding Harry recognised that he'd been haunted for years anyway. One spectre less would make little difference to him, but who was Harry to deny the young man a career because he couldn't face up to his own past?

He didn't know if what he was about to do was because he'd finally decided to battle his long buried guilt, or whether he acting in slavish obedience to the ghost from his youth, but having dragged his mobile from his jacket pocket he texted the HR department. Hurriedly, before he could change his mind.

Chosen candidate: Will Crombie

There was nothing like a good friend to give you a kick up the backside, even if he did happen to be dead. So tomorrow at the rising of the sun Harry and his haunted poppy would hit the Grid, apologise and begin again. It would be a struggle but he needed to fight his demons, not shamble around trying to drown them in whisky. He needed a better way to live if he was to justify the sacrifice of those, who believing in him, had willingly laid down their lives to serve the creed he and the poppy personified.

Regnum Defende.

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><p><em><strong>Thanks for reading. Before anyone complains, no disrespect was intended to the war veterans of any era. I've just spent parts of this weekend shovelling data onto the 'Lives of the First World War' website, a conflict in which my grandfather and great uncles served. In Britain although the Remembrance Sunday is the main day of recollection, silence and some ceremonies take place on the 11th November. Wotton Bassett is now know as Royal Wotton Bassett for the part its townspeople played in honouring the fallen. The National Arboretum commemorates those killed in conflicts since the end of the Second War World and the Commonwealth War Graves Commission still erects gravestones for those who die in war. How those who work for the Security Services are honoured is of course a mystery. <strong>_


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